Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: toward ecosystem-based management of fisheries
- I Life in the oceans
- II Evaluating impact on marine life
- 5 How much fish is being extracted from the oceans and what is it worth?
- 6 Fishing down food webs
- 7 Aquaculture up and down the food web
- 8 Beyond food: fish in the twenty-first century
- 9 The shifting baselines syndrome: perception, deception, and the future of our oceans
- III Managing living resources
- IV The human side
- V Impacting policy
- Index
- References
6 - Fishing down food webs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: toward ecosystem-based management of fisheries
- I Life in the oceans
- II Evaluating impact on marine life
- 5 How much fish is being extracted from the oceans and what is it worth?
- 6 Fishing down food webs
- 7 Aquaculture up and down the food web
- 8 Beyond food: fish in the twenty-first century
- 9 The shifting baselines syndrome: perception, deception, and the future of our oceans
- III Managing living resources
- IV The human side
- V Impacting policy
- Index
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Fishing affects all levels of biological organization, from individuals to populations, affecting their demographic and genetic characteristics, as well as communities and ecosystems, (e.g., Hutchings, 2000; Law, 2000; Jackson et al., 2001; Daskalov, 2002; Pauly et al., 2002). Among the many effects of fishing, those referring to the marine ecosystem (i.e., trophic structure and energy flow within the ecosystem) have received particular attention in recent years.
This attention is in part because of the pioneering work of Pauly et al. (1998a). These authors used the world fisheries catch statistics (published annually by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO) and the trophic level (TL; Froese, this volume) of all species or groups of species contributing to the catches and showed that the mean trophic level of the catches had declined significantly, by about 0.5 TL, over a 50-year period. This decline was observed for global marine catches as well as for the majority of the different FAO subareas of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, and the Mediterranean and Black Seas. This process, which, as will be shown here, has had a strong impact on fisheries science, is now known as “fishing down marine food webs” (FDFW). In fact, FDFW gave “flesh and bones” to something that many fisheries scientists intuitively had in their minds, while formal descriptions were few (Christensen, 1996).
FDFW was very enthusiastically received by the media (Baron, this volume) as well as by a large part of the scientific community.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ecosystem Approaches to FisheriesA Global Perspective, pp. 72 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
and (2003) Impact of fishing on fish assemblages in tropical lagoons: the example of the Ebrie lagoon, West Africa. Aquatic Living Resources, 16, 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , , and . (2005) Overfishing of inland waters. Bioscience, 55, 1041–1051.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2005) Long-term changes in the mean trophic level of Central Chile fishery landings. Scientia Marina, 69, 295–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2009) Changes in the trophic level of Portuguese landings and fish market price variation in the last decades. Fisheries Research, 97, 216–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2000) Chronicles of Cuban Marine Fisheries (1935–1995): Trend analysis and fisheries potential. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper, 394. Rome: FAO.
(1994) Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
and (2008) “Fishing down marine food webs” and spatial expansion of coastal fisheries in India, 1950–2000. Fisheries Research, 91, 26–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1998) How pervasive is “fishing down marine food webs”? Science, 282, 1383a.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2000) Apparent changes in the trophic composition of world marine harvests: the perspective from the FAO capture database. Ocean & Coastal Management, 43, 615–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2004) Annex I, decision VII/30. The 2020 biodiversity target: a framework for implementation. Decisions from the Seventh Meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Kuala Lumpur.Google Scholar
(1996) Managing fisheries involving predator and prey species. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 6, 417–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1998) Fishery-induced changes in a marine ecosystem: insight from models of the Gulf of Thailand. Journal of Fish Biology, 53, 128–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , , and (2003) Hundred-year decline of North Atlantic predatory fishes. Fish and Fisheries, 4, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1991) A Guide to the ECOPATH II Software System (Version 2.0). Manila, Philippines: ICLARM.Google Scholar
and (1992) A Guide to the Ecopath II Software System (Version 2.1). Manila, Philippines: ICLARM.Google Scholar
, , , and (1991) Appendix 6. Catch and potential of major fisheries resource systems in tropical and subtropical areas. In A Strategic Plan for International Fisheries Research. Manila, Philippines: ICLARM.Google Scholar
and (2004) Ecopath with Ecosim: methods, capabilities and limitations. Ecological Modelling, 172, 109–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2000) “Pandora's Box” in fisheries: is there a link between economy and ecology? In , ed., Fishing Down the Mediterranean Food Webs? CIESM Workshop Series 12. Kerkyra, Greece: CIESM.Google Scholar
, , and (2008) Food-web dynamics in the South Catalan Sea ecosystem (NW Mediterranean) for 1978–2003. Ecological Modelling, 217, 95–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2002) Overfishing drives a trophic cascade in the Black Sea. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 225, 53–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ed. (2000) Fishing Down the Mediterranean Food Webs? Proceedings of a CIESM Workshop held in Kerkyra, Greece, July 26–30, 2000, CIESM Workshop Series No 12. Kerkyra, Greece: CIESM.
, and (2009) Fishing up the food web? 12,000 years of maritime subsistence and adaptive adjustments on California's Channel Islands. Pacific Science, 63, 711–724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2006) Fishing through marine food webs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 3171–3175.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(2005) Fishing impacts on marine ecosystems off Brazil, with emphasis on the northeastern region. Ph.D. thesis University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
and (1990) FishBase: An information system to support fisheries and aquaculture research. Fishbyte, 8, 21–24.Google Scholar
and , eds. (2000) FishBase 2000: Concepts, Design and Data Sources. Los Baños, Philippines: ICLARM.
(2006) The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. Journal of the American Medical Association, 295, 90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , , and (2007) Decline of demersal resources in North-West Africa: an analysis of Mauritanian trawl-survey data over the past 25 years. African Journal of Marine Science, 29, 331–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2005) Changes in the structure and function of the North Sea fish foodweb, 1973–2000, and the impacts of fishing and climate. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 62, 847.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2006) Fundamentals of Conservation Biology, 3rd edn. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Science.Google Scholar
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and (2001) Historical overfishing and the recent collapse of coastal ecosystems. Science, 293, 629–638.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
and (2008) Assessing the sources of the fishing down marine food web process in the Argentinean-Urugnayan Common Fishing Zone. Scientia Marina, 72, 25–36.Google Scholar
, , , , and (2002) Long-term trends in the trophic structure of the North Sea fish community: evidence from stable-isotope analysis, size-spectra and community metrics. Marine Biology, 141, 1085–1097.Google Scholar
and (2008) The effect of season and sex on trophic levels of marine fishes. Journal of Fish Biology, 72, 1463–1487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2007) Fisheries Biology, Assessment and Management. 2nd edn. Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2004) Changes in the trophic structure of fish demersal communities in West Africa in the three last decades. Aquatic Living Resources, 17, 163–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2000) Fishing, selection, and phenotypic evolution. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 57, 659–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , , , and (2004) Ecological stages of the Venice Lagoon analysed using landing time series data. Journal of Marine Systems, 51, 331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2009) Fishing through (and up) Alaskan food webs. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 66, 201–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2004) Two centuries of multiple human impacts and successive changes in a North Atlantic food web. Ecological Applications, 14, 1428–1447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2005) The mean trophic level of Uruguayan landings during the period 1990–2001. Fisheries Research, 74, 223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2004) Fishing down the food web in Iberian prehistory? A new look at the fishes from Cueva de Nerja (Málaga, Spain). Antibes, Petits Animaux et Sociétés Humaine du complément Alimentaire aux Ressources Utilitaires, XXIVe rencontres internationales d'archéologie et d'histoire d'Antibes.
, , , , , , and (2009) Contrasting changes between the northern and southern Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystems associated with the collapse of groundfish stocks. Deep-Sea Research Part II-Topical Studies in Oceanography, 56, 2117–2131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2003) Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities. Nature, 423, 280–283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
and (2001) Part 1 Chinese marine capture fisheries from 1950 to the late 1990s: the hopes, the plans and the data. In , and , eds., The Marine Fisheries of China: Development and Reported Catches. Fisheries Centre Research Report 9(2). Vancouver, Canada: Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, pp. 1–27.Google Scholar
(1979) Theory and Management of Tropical Multispecies Stocks, ICLARM Studies and Reviews 1. Manila, Philippines: ICLARM.Google Scholar
(1980) On the interrelationships between natural mortality, growth parameters, and mean environmental temperature in 175 fish stocks. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 39, 175–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1995) Primary production required to sustain global fisheries. Nature, 374, 255–257 [Erratum in Nature, 376: 279].CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , , , and (2002) Towards sustainability in world fisheries. Nature, 418, 689–695.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, and (2000) Ecopath, Ecosim, and Ecospace as tools for evaluating ecosystem impact of fisheries. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 57, 697–706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2003) Development of fisheries in the Gulf of Thailand large marine ecosystem: analysis of an unplanned experiment. In and , eds. Large Marine Ecosystems of the World: Change and Sustainability. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.Google Scholar
and (1991b) The FishBase Project … or how scattered information on fish can be assembled and made useful for research and development. EC Fisheries Cooperation Bulletin, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, Belgium, DG VIII/D/5.
and (1979) A simple method for fitting oscillating length growth data, with a program for pocket calculator. International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Council Meeting 1979/G: 24. Demersal Fish Committee, 26 pp.
and (2000) Approaches for dealing with three sources of bias when studying the fishing down marine food web phenomenon. In , ed., Fishing down the Mediterranean Food Webs? Proceedings of a CIESM Workshop held in Kerkyra, Greece, July 26–30, 2000, CIESM Workshop Series No 12. Kerkyra, Greece: CIESM.Google Scholar
and (2001) Chapter 4. Fishing down marine food webs: an update. In and , eds., Waters in Peril. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
and (2005) Fishing down marine food webs: it is far more pervasive than we thought. Bulletin of Marine Science, 76, 197–211.Google Scholar
, , , , , and (2001) Fishing down Canadian aquatic food webs. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 58, 51–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2005) Background and interpretation of the “Marine Trophic Index” as a measure of biodiversity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, 360, 415–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2006) Is fishing-down trophic web a generalized phenomenon? The case of Mexican fisheries. Fisheries Research, 79, 349–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1991) The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
, , and (2002) Long-term changes in the trophic level of the Celtic Sea fish community and fish market price distribution. Journal of Applied Ecology, 39, 377–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2003) Long-term changes in the trophic level of western Mediterranean fishery and aquaculture landings. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 60, 222–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1984) Model of a coral reef ecosystem I. The ECOPATH model and its application to French Frigate Shoals. Coral Reefs, 3, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2006) Marine trophic levels targeted between AD 300 and 1500 on the Georgia Coast, USA. Journal of Archaeological Science, 33, 806–822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2004) “Fishing down the food web”: a case study from St. Augustine, Florida, USA. American Antiquity, 69, 63–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , and (2005) The history of ocean resources: modeling cod biomass using historical records. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 3, 84–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (2004) Fishing down coastal food webs in the Gulf of California. Fisheries, 29, 19–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2004) Effects of fisheries on the Cantabrian Sea shelf ecosystem. Ecological Modelling, 172, 151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , , and (2008) Environmental Science: A Student's Companion. London: Sage Publications Ltd.Google Scholar
, and (2004) Accelerating trophic-level dysfunction in kelp forest ecosystems of the Western North Atlantic. Ecosystems, 7, 323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2005) Fisheries impact on trophic levels: longterm trends in Hellenic waters. In and , eds., State of the Hellenic Marine Environment. Athens: Hellenic Center for Marine Research, pp. 326–329.Google Scholar
and (2005) Imbalances in the reporting and teaching of ecology from limnetic, oceanic and terrestrial eco-domains: bridging the gap between aquatic and terrestrial ecology. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 304, 292–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2000) Fishing down the marine food webs in the Hellenic seas. In , ed., Fishing Down the Mediterranean Food Webs? CIESM Workshop Series 12. Kerkyra, Greece: CIESM.Google Scholar
, and (2003) Modelling and forecasting monthly swordfish catches in the Eastern Mediterranean. Scientia Marina, 67, 283–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2009) Farming up Mediterranean food webs. Conservation Biology, 23, 230–232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
and (2004) Introduction to the Biology of Marine Life. Ontario, Canada: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.Google Scholar
, and (2006) Long-term changes in the fish community structure from the Tsushima warm current region of the Japan/East Sea with an emphasis on the impacts of fishing and climate regime shift over the last four decades. Progress in Oceanography, 68, 217–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2003) Fishing down the food web: an Icelandic case study. In , ed., Proceedings of a Conference held in Akureyri, Iceland, on April 6–7th 2000 Competitiveness within the Global Fisheries. Akureyri, Iceland: University of Akureyri.Google Scholar
, and (1997) Structuring dynamic models of exploited ecosystems from trophic mass-balance assessments. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 7, 139–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1999) Ecospace: prediction of mesoscale spatial patterns in trophic relationships of exploited ecosystems, with emphasis on the impacts of marine protected areas. Ecosystems, 2, 539–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2004) Fisheries Ecology and Management. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
(2008) An uneasy Eden. National Geographic, July.
- 7
- Cited by